The Perfect Touchdown

“I’m sorry to suddenly bring you here, Miss Parks,” the Dean said.

I was sitting in his rather small office in an uncomfortable leather chair and wondered what in the hell I did to get called to his office.

“It was brought to my attention over the Winter Break that there has been some harassment and bullying within the cheer squad. Today, we are putting an end to that, starting with the suspension of Leah Palmer and dismissal of her captain position. Now, I understand that this position is something that is agreed upon by the members, but with one semester left of the school season, I believe your team is in desperate need of a captain.”

My blood froze over in my veins.

“Are you asking me to be cheer captain?” What was he talking about harassment and bullying? Sure, she was unbearable to work under, but Leah never really bullied anyone to the extent of being suspended.

What the hell was going on? Was he really not going to tell me anything? I wondered, but there was no use asking, he kept talking.

“Yes, we need someone to take over right away and since you were the co-captain, I don’t think anyone on the team will disagree. Do you?”

I didn’t see any reason either, but was I fit to be captain? And if I was, was that opinion shared by everyone else?

“I’d like to speak with the others and see what they say. If we can agree upon a new captain by the end of the week, is that alright?”

He nodded and dismissed me from his office. I wandered the halls slowly before I got back to the field and tried to piece together just what happened while I was gone. I was almost back at the field when I got a text message from Avery, asking me out to lunch after practice.

It was weird of him to invite me to lunch; we were never really the kind of siblings that went out for food casually with each other. We were more of the siblings to wreak havoc together. I texted back and agreed anyway, maybe there was something he wanted to speak about.

“Hey guys, mind if we talk?” I asked the team and explained to them what I spoke about with the Dean.

To my utter surprise and joy, they all agreed that I would be the perfect fit for cheer captain and expressed excitement for the new cheers and choreography I would bring to the team. I tried so hard not to cry but a few tears of joy escaped.

That was probably the best cheer practice I ever had at San Marco, and I couldn’t wait for the rest of the semester now. It was almost enough to distract me from my thoughts of Aiden.

~*~

After practice, I had went back to the dorms to shower and change into something more comfortable before I met with Avery for lunch. Even though we had spent most of our Winter Break together, he wasn’t in the house for most of it and I was, since I don’t have any friends outside of Avery and Aiden.

It was the second saddest discovery I had made.

I texted my brother once I was done and asked where he was, but he told me to head to Campus Square and he would meet me there to grab something to eat. Campus Square was the small shopping district attached to campus where there were clothing and grocery stores, restaurants and tons more so that students didn’t have to venture far away from campus to get what they needed.

I stood at the entrance and waited until I saw my brother, but instead, it was Aiden who walked up to me with a stoic face.

“Was this some kind of setup? How did you get my brother in on it?” I rolled my eyes and prepared to leave.

“Ry, wait. Can we please talk? I have something I want to show you.” I noticed he had his backpack with him, a rare sight for me to see, and my curiosity grew.

“You can have 10 minutes,” I said and turned toward the Chance One restaurant, the most expensive one in Campus Square. “And you’re buying!”

~*~

It was awkward as we ordered our drinks and waited until we were alone.

“So, what do you want to talk about?” I asked.

“This.” He slid over a USB.

Before I had the chance to ask what it was for, he took out his laptop and plugged it in. Then, he turned the dimmed screen and I almost screamed bloody murder.

There were tons of my photos, the ones I sent only to Aiden, but they were vandalized most crudely, some of them not even covered up and some accentuated horrible areas of my body.

“W-what is this?” I trembled.

“This is the reason I broke up with you and have been a complete asshole ever since. This was Leah’s doing.”

Aiden went on to tell me how Leah was able to get a hold of his phone and used the photos against him, forcing him to break up with me or she was going to release all of the photos as they were – to the entire school and anyone else on her contacts list.

He didn’t want me to be humiliated like that, he would’ve rather I be hurt from a break-up than be scarred for life from this. The tears poured down my face as the realization had quickly hit me that he had been fiercely protecting me this entire time while being blackmailed to no end.

Aiden confirmed that it was Leah who took the picture, and she planned to tell my brother and turn him against us, but then she found my photos on his phone and everything changed. She wanted to taunt me and watch as I squirmed until Aiden ultimately broke up with me.

“Why did she hate me so much?”

“Because she knew you had what she wanted, and some people are willing to go above and beyond to get what they want.”

It still didn’t make any sense to me. I had never done anything so bad to Leah that it would cause her to try and ruin my entire life. It was my first year of University and these weren’t the experiences that I thought I was going to have.

But when I looked back at it all, I realized that Aiden was there every single time to make sure that I never fell, and that these horrible times never changed me for the worse.

“I’m really sorry…for the way I treated you, too,” I said.

He shook his head. “I’m honestly just happy I was able to sort this all out.”

“So, you got Leah suspended and convinced my brother to allow us to date. How in the world did you get that to happen?”

“Well, that’s the funny thing. I never got permission for us to date, I still need to prove to Avery that I’m worthy of you. But in truth, he had his suspicions, and he has been waiting for us to come clean with him, that’s all he really wanted. If we weren’t going to come clean, he didn’t want us walking on eggshells around each other or sneaking around.”

‘He just wanted us to be honest with him.’

Now I felt even worse than before. If I had known that I would’ve told him years ago and tried to get him to even help me, maybe. But I was so concerned about hurting and betraying his feelings for his best friend, that I was blinded to what my brother might actually want, and that was just the truth.

“Wow, you were really busy this break. Did you even go home?”

He shrugged. “Not really, but my Mom understood once I told her what was going on. I made her promise not to tell your parents, you can trust that unless your life is in danger she won’t spill a word.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Would you keep anything from Avery? You forget that our Mom’s are best friends.”

His eyes widened. ‘Ah, shit.’

“Why were you brought to the Dean’s office if it wasn’t for this?” he asked.

“Oh, actually, that makes sense now. He said Leah was suspended but he didn’t say exactly what for, I was confused because she had never bullied anyone on the team. But he called me to ask if I would take over as cheer captain.”

Aiden’s face lit up. “Ry, that’s amazing! Why aren’t you more excited about it?”

“Well, I was more concerned about this. It’s been hard to be excited about anything when you’re heartbroken.” I wanted to tease him a little, but the way his face fell with guilt made me feel terrible. “I was just trying to tease you, sorry. Too soon?”

“Just a bit, Ry. Just a bit,” he chuckled.

I could feel that everything was falling back into place, and I couldn’t have been happier. Maybe I was a fool, I told myself once again that I was moving on from my feelings for Aiden, yet here I was on the first day back and we were already a couple again.

But this is different. He never intended to break my heart, he just wanted to protect me and my future, knowing if those photos had ever got out it could’ve affected my future career.

He reached his hand across the table, and I intertwined our fingers together. When our hands touched I finally felt at peace from all the turmoil I had experienced over the past couple of months.

“Next time something like this happens, God forbid it ever does, promise me you’ll just tell me, and we’ll tackle it together,” I said.

He chuckled. “Football puns, nice.”

I slapped the top of his hand with my other. “I’m being serious.”

“Okay, I promise, I won’t ever keep something like this from you again.” He kissed my hand over and over again.

“So, what happens from here?” I asked.

He smirked. “Now, we make up for lost time.”

“Our drinks haven’t got here yet,” I pointed out and his face fell.

“Oh, right.”

We waited until our drinks arrived and ordered something to go. Aiden grabbed my hand and quite literally ran out of there as I giggled up a storm. We got to his truck, and I was about to climb in when he stopped me and spun me around against the door.

He pressed me against it and hovered his lips above mine.

“It’s taken me way too long to say this, but I fucking love you, Rylee Parks.”

I beamed at him. “I fucking love you too, Aiden Reed.”

THE END

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